Flora of the Forest

There are bad kings. There are cartoonishly bad kings. And then there’s King Gregory the third, Greatest Turd of Them All.

Out of everyone in the forest, Clarence does the best impression of him. We all voted one day and every hand, claw, and paw went up for Clar. It’s not exactly a fair competition, though, as Clar does see His Grace every day.

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“It ish I, your glorioush king. Shtare upon my face and be aweshtruck.” Clar takes center stage, or center slab of rotting bark, legs stretched in a wide arc, belly stuck out well past his chin. The highlight of the impression is Clar’s gaping mouth, teeth coated in a thick, golden substance.

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The birds twiddle their approval in the trees above me. Pinprick gets so excited that he throws his pokey little body upon the nearly identical spiny mouse beside him, which in turn causes the spiny mouse to shed half his skin and go scuttling into the forest a terrified pink lump.

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“Pinprick.” I sweep the mouse gently into my palm. “I know it’s an evolutionary response to fear, but you’ve gotta stop forcing your friends to regenerate their skin if you want them to stick around.”

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Pinprick’s wide, cannonball eyes go all watery and I set him on my shoulder to munch a long strand of hair.

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“What’re the crittersh shaying, Flora?” Clar turns to me, arms out in dramatic question, teeth bared in golden smile.

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“Best one yet.” I push myself off the forest floor and crunch over to Clar. “You really disappear into the character. Almost makes you forget all this.” I flick one of the bells of his jester hat, which tinkles in the breeze.

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“Not my fault the uniform’sh my only clean clothesh. Schomeone elsh ish on laundry duty thish week.”

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“True. But it is your fault you can’t identify rabbit poop.”

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Clar’s brow furrows until I clack my teeth at him. Then, his crinkled eyes widen and he launches himself at the ground.

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“BLEH!” He swipes at his mouth, gold chunks flying from where he’d packed them against his teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

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“Sometimes, the best lesson is pain.”

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“Where’d you learn that, the school of sadism?” Clar runs his tongue all over the puffy gold sleeves of his jester uniform, leaving yellow streaks across the delicate fabric. “Man, it was the perfect color to match his teeth.”

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“Well, King Gregory is full of shit.” I raise my finger to my shoulder and Pinprick claps it with his pink paw.

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“Yeah, well, warn a guy next time he might be ingesting feces. We can’t all be wiser-than-thou druids.”

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“Flora!” A croaky voice echoes off the trees, carried on the breeze to my ears. I whip around, eyes settling on a grove of moss-laden willows. I give Pinprick a quick kiss on the bristly side before dropping him to the forest floor and taking off in their direction.

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“What’s going on?” Clar’s jester bells jingle as he struggles to keep up.

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“The hut,” I shout over my shoulder as tree branches bend out of the way for me. “Someone needs help.”

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The wind chimes lining our home’s ramshackle roof tinkle as I rush by. I run my hand along the hut’s rounded, stone exterior, trying to sense what may be waiting. But the stones just pulse with the same anticipation I feel in my chest. I reach the front door, already creaked halfway open, and push inside.

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Old Crone Crisella is slumped over the cot on the far end of the hut. Her stringy, gray hair spreads out like a halo. Her legs, speckled with decades-old thorn pricks, are stretched across the dirt floor. She lets out a low moan like her very guts have been torn from her stomach. Crisella’s never one for hiding emotions, but this seems serious.

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“Are you hurt?” I stumble over jars of loose herbs and my heart sinks as I see crimson staining her frock. But when I tug her aside, I realize the blood isn’t coming from her. Polly-Anne, her possum familiar, lays stiffly on the bed, tongue lolling out from her razor-tooth snout, blood gurgling from her side.

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“Oh, Polly-Anne!” Crisella moans, throwing herself back over the creature. “You have to help her, Flora, you just have to.”

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I rest my hand against Polly-Anne’s bristly neck. I feel motion there. A heartbeat. Each ba-bump radiates up my arm, seeming to join with my own. “She’s still alive.”

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Clar groans as he joins us. “On my cot, really?”

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“Get me root of ginger and Holy Basil from the cabinet, Clar. Fast.”

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 He sighs but springs into action.

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I grab a spare sock from the floor and a handful of moist earth from outside. I say a quick prayer over the earth before dashing back to Polly-Anne’s side.

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Crisella is now pressed against the wall, grasping her possum’s twitching paw. “Oh it’s awful, Flora. My sweet angel was just in the caves, you know how she likes to frolic in the dampness, when it got her.”

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I pack the earth tight against Polly-Anne’s bleeding side. “What got her?”

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By now Clar has returned with the jars. I sprinkle a few generous fistfuls of herbs over Polly-Anne’s dirt-packed wound. Her breathing gets faster.

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“The Silver Beast!” Crisella throws herself dramatically over Polly-Anne’s body with a sob.

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I gently shoulder Crisella out of the way and reach for Polly-Anne with the sock in my mouth. Clar reluctantly helps me pluck her from the bed, cradling her between us like a newborn baby.

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“You must’ve felt it in the air,” Crisella continues. “The shifting of the winds. Mother Earth crying out in agony… Ahh!”

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Normally, I’d write off Crisella’s ramblings as poetic license. But the last few months have felt off. The slight resistance every time I reach for a handful of dirt. The way the forest seems to sigh more often than sing.

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I wrap the sock tightly around Polly-Anne’s midsection, tying it in a quick knot at her belly. Then, I press my hands to her side. I close my eyes, letting my feet connect with the earth beneath them, following the energy down, deep until my stomach clenches. A rush of power shoots through my body, surging through Polly-Anne, who stiffens with its touch. For a moment we’re all connected, the three of us, as I relay this wordless conversation from earth to possum and back again.

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And then an unfamiliar part happens. A rumbling at my feet, like thunder from the ground.

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I snap away from Polly-Anne, who tumbles out of Clar’s arms but lands flat on her feet. She shakes life back into her fur and snips annoyedly at the sock.

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“Did you feel that?” I ask Clar, who nods darkly.

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We leave Crisella and Polly-Anne to their joyous reunion as we slip out of the hut, following the rumbling beneath our feet. Through shabby trees and footworn paths. As we pop over a hill, my eyes catch a flash of shiny silver.

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“Silver Beast,” I whisper. The beast is not soft and round like animals of the forest. It’s all hard edges. Unnatural shapes. A machine. Bigger than an elephant and just as strong too, it drives forward on a set of spinning wheels, its scorpion-like tail disappearing into the mouth of the cave.

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A procession of carriages catches my eye. I recognize a few as guard carriages, I’ve helped mend plenty of injuries in wake of their village raids, but the one that really strikes me is the largest one, shaped like a golden onion.

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“Oh no,” Clar whispers. I don’t need his commentary to guess who’s inside. I leap up from behind the hill and start weaving towards the carriage.

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“Flora!” Clar hisses behind me, but anything else is drowned out by the rumbling I feel deep in my bones. The earth is writhing and groaning. The Silver Beast’s wheels seem to cut through my own skin.

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I stop against an oak just a few steps away from the onion carriage. Two guards in pale yellow uniforms stand by the entrance, looking like they hatched out of a generic buff guy incubator. The leaves bend to conceal my approaching footsteps but it’s hardly necessary. They’re too busy swiping at their trousers.

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“’Twas a fire ant!” one guard cries. “Big as your mother’s behind, and red of hue too!”

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“Doth its bite hurt as much as my rapier shoved up yours?” The second guard jabs his rapier for emphasis, its sharp point catching on the sleeve of his mate’s uniform.

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The first guard’s face sours. “Ow. That really hurt, dude.”

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“Speak fancy!” the second guard hisses, eyes darting to the carriage door. “You know boss man will decapitate you if you don’t. Love you though, bro.”

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“Love you too.” They share a small, armored fist bump. “God, I hate these mining operations.”

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I bend down low and touch my finger to the earth. I reach out, stretching my mind until it fills with the jittering, frenzied language of ants. Keep biting. I pass the intention over our connection. The frenzy grows louder and then the guards jolt to attention, smacking first at their feet, then their knees, all the way up their chests.

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“Damn these ants to Hell! Perhaps we are better suited to guard the perimeter of the cave.”

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The two guards scramble away from the carriage, leaving its entrance wide open.

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As I creep towards the door, my ears prickle with the sound of a voice I’ve only truly heard a few times in my life.

“Novocain! I deshire my jeshter, Novocain!”

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Another voice, strained and tired, replies, “My Grace, you kicked him out of the carriage three miles back.”

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“Well now I deshire him! I cannot withshtand another moment of thish operashion without hish amushments!”

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“My Grace, you had the carriage run through him thrice… please, I beg you hold still.”

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The king cries out in response, an anguished scream.

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I strike now, thrusting my hands at the carriage’s door, commanding the winds to blow it open, expecting, perhaps, a hostage situation, bloody torture.

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The scene is… not that. The king lays on a velvet cot at the center of the carriage, belly rising like a tall hill, eyes squeezed tightly shut. The man who stands behind him is not a soldier or a thief. He’s a wisp of a man, hunched over with age, in a long, blue smock. Large lenses magnify his eyes tenfold and burning candles dangle from a steel rod wrapped around his head.

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But what I’m really drawn to is the king’s gaping mouth. I’ve never seen it up close but man, turns out Clar’s not exaggerating. In place of nearly every tooth is a chunky golden nugget. His jaw trembles with the weight of this metal and I notice the front nugget is partially dislodged, a bloody pool forming in the space where it meets gum.

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“Have thoshe foolsh returned with my new golden nugget? I need thish tooth removed at onche!”

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The old man wobbles as he looks me up and down, then holds up hands full of blood-stained tools in surrender.

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“Your Grace.” I try not to spit the title as I step up into the carriage. “My name’s Flora. I’m a druid in these woods you’re sworn to protect.”

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The king sits up with a lot of heaving and hacking. He doesn’t close his mouth as he stares me down, I don’t think he could even if he wanted to. “What ish it you want, witch?”

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“I want you to stop digging gold out of the caves. It’s destroying the forest. The entire ecosystem.”

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He beady eyes narrow. “The gold ish nesheshary to maintain my looksh. An ugly king ish not worthy of shupport.” He attempts to grin, maybe in the way monkeys do to threaten one another, but as the loose nugget wobbles, he cries out, face flushing red. “Shtupid medishin man! The whole point of riding into the woodsh wash to make thish operashion fashter!”

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“Your Grace, the miners are trying but the remaining gold is buried very deep…” The medicine man’s eyes don’t leave mine as his trembling lips mouth: Help.

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Suddenly, the whole carriage quakes beneath us. The Silver Beast must be drilling. I look over at the cave and see an avalanche of rocks tumbling from the entrance. A family of bats shoots into the sky. I feel their frenzied heartbeats deep within my chest. And then the screaming starts. Shrill and grating, like blade against rock, I feel it deep in the marrow of my bones. The king’s shrieks of pain join with the earth’s, with my own.

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“I have a solution!” I scream into the chaos. “I can make your teeth golden. More golden than now. The material’s weightless. It comes from a source that’ll never run out.”

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“Yes, yes!” the medicine man chimes. “These woodsy magick folk are very resourceful! Very skilled in their approach!”

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The rumbling stops long enough for me to catch my breath, for the carriage to stop quaking, for the king’s wails to cease. Wiping a globby line of blood from his lip, he sneers at me. “Why should I trusht you, woodsh dweller?”

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“I vouch for her, Your Grace!” Clar leaps into the carriage, jester bells rattling as he takes heaving breaths. “Ten noble years I’ve performed for you, and I can attest that Flora’s the best druid in all the woods.” I flash him a smile, which he returns wearily. “My own head be on it.”

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It’s twilight by the time I return to the bark slab. My hands still shake from the delicate procedure. My ears ring with the echo of the king’s cries.

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Clar’s sitting on the bark, head in his hands. When he sees me approach, he leaps up in a flourish of jingles. “Am I getting decapitated?”

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“Not today. The king loves his new smile.”

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His face lights up. “That’s amazing! You saved the forest! And my beautiful, beautiful head!” He grabs my hands and spins me in a dizzying circle. “How did you do it?”

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“Well… I told him to eat shit.”

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Clar stops spinning and drops my hands back at my side. “You didn’t.”

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“I did. Well, in fewer words. Actually, no words at all.”

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When his brow furrows, I clack my teeth at him.

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The realization washes over him like a warm wind and a grin once again splits his face. “Oh, Flora. Flor-a.”

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“He’ll be back every month for a replacement. We’d better start feeding the rabbits well.”

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“Oh, I will. I’ll feed them boiled cabbage and beans and cauliflower you can smell from a mile away…”

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As Clar continues to list off all the foods that might make the king’s new golden teeth… pleasantly pungent, I feel the earth tremble beneath me. I’m not sure if it has a sense of humor, but if it does, it’s certainly cackling along with us.